ReddishF

Okay. This is thanksgiving weekend, so I'll be able to get a LOT done this weekend. Watch me! First off, this is Reddish. She'll be the second of two bounty hunters in the game. She's a nice person, doesn't really care what's going on about the scroll on Player's back. She's also a character design that's not mine! I asked the original creator if I could put his character in the game, his style really goes hand in hand with mine so I decided to put her in.

Next up, discussion about idle places on the town map. The town is going to be called Hunniton Beach by the way. It's related to a town near mine called Hunnington Beach. Of course we can change this if we think of another name. But yeah, onto that idle places feature... I'm sure you were thinking as well on what to do with these places in town that do nothing for now.

A good idea is so that the player can work there. All locations should have a confirmation before the player spends time. The question would be like "Would you like to spend the evening/afternoon with Taiyo?" or "Would you like to mix drinks at the bar for 100$ for the night?". The bar's first visit would let the player practice drinking. If he practices it, then on a later story piece where the player drinks, the story in that part of the game changes. After the first visit, then the bartender tells the player that the bartender wants less hours of working, so the player can take over and get quick cash. Other places would have replayable enemy encounters, like the Dojo. The park would have the player eating a hot dog, only to find the paper he's eating it with is a scroll. Some places that offer scrolls would only open at a certain time, so that the player can't just grab these special scrolls from the very beginning and be very powerful.
Criticm of the idea... First off, it would add more programming to this, and maybe a few more drawings on my part. I think it'd be fine if we left it to the player's imagination rather than drawing a player mixing drinks/doing various jobs. From a gaming perspective though, it would definitely add a layer of decision making. Before, the first playthrough for the player would have much less decisions. He would either date a girl, or sacrifice a trip to the store. The second playthrough for the player would have to be very strategetic, as he'd have to plan his only three free trips to the store, as to when he'd take them. But now, with the new idle places feature, the player has many decisions to choose from. Even the first playthrough, the player would have to think. Should I date the girl, or get a free item/money? With this new feature, to rebalance the game, the shop would have to be a free place to go to, doesn't cost time. If we DIDN'T make the shop a free place to go to, then the player would have three basic different decisions to go through when he's playing, and we'd have to balance the game so that we take ALL of this into account. With that also, the difficulty would ramp up, and we'd have either a very easy game for people that can easily leisure to get free money/shopping versus the very hard game where the player can barely do either.

As for a decision, I believe the game is better off with these new idle places. Free money/free scrolls/free enemy refighting(more money) is something the new player would absolutely need, but the veteran of the game would do his best to play without so he could get two girls at once. However, I do realise it will take significantly more time to program these in. I think we should simply wait. It seems mostly easy to add in, but timely. If we have the time we should do it.